I have just been looking at some of my old sites and realised that 1 site had a totally screwed navigator. Traffic has been minimal so in the scheme of things it has never really been on my radar when looking at adsense earnings. As the screwed navigator meant that there were only 2 methods of exits, the back button or the adsense ads my CTR was over 30% when I took a look. Another example of the poorer the site the richer the adsense pickings....
I have noticed the same thing with my sites... the less choices (i.e. links) you give the users the higher the adsense CTR.
Although this is true, you can only then make money on the SEO, which is minimal. If you want to make real money, it's called stickiness. Getting people to bookmark your site, because it's so compelling and having them come back. Getting people to freely link to your site, boosting your Page Rank.
Problem with this is you will get no repeat traffic and smart pricing will kick your butt because hostages are less likely to convert compared to people who choose ads because they are interested.
Sounds more like trapping those who wander in lol Maybe if you make an internal page(not the main page) with nothing but adsense ads and the back button. It'll be kinda like having a maze and if someone takes a wrong turn they hit a wall... a wall with a bulletin board full of ads lol
Is this violating the TOS? I was under the impression that the TOS states your page should be easy to navigate. I have Photoshop Tutorials that are one page tutorials displaying adsense with just one link at the top saying "Return to Menu". I don't think it's violating the TOS. ...or is it?
neither do I. I think that if you have a back button, it's quite easy to get back to where you were, thus easy navigation!
I guess it boils down to short-term gain or long term. For long term, one must have a lot of links for the spider to crawl and spend more time at your site.
What Longroad was refering to was LikeMike's suggestion that the page should have ONLY adsense and a back button. TOS says pages need content.
I was in no way giving any advice as I am, in any way, an adsense expert. In fact, you are correct, the TOS does state that the page must have content. I was actually being a little on the side of sarcastic... I guess sometimes it just falls on deaf ears